The team headed by Ambassador John Jenkins that the British government had asked to review the circumstances of Islamist groups in the UK has completed its work and submitted its report to Downing Street. Although the report did not propose a ban on those groups, which include the Muslim Brotherhood, it did recommend curtailing their activities and prohibiting them from engaging in certain activities that are not consistent with the laws governing charity work. It also cautioned against allowing Muslim Brotherhood activists into the UK after they leave countries in the Middle East that they had used as their base of operations. I learned from a senior British diplomat that the committee's report, which was based on a comprehensive review of the activities of Islamist groups in the UK, concluded that there were “organic” links between the Muslim Brotherhood organisation and some terrorist groups, especially with regard to support and funding. The Daily Telegraph wrote last week that Sir John Jenkins' report “accepts that some of the movement's activity amounts to complicity with armed groups and extremists in the Middle East and elsewhere.” Citing a British official involved in the review, the newspaper adds that parts of the report are too sensitive to publish. Islamist groups in the UK can expect to be in for a tough time in the coming period. They will be under constant scrutiny and will be prohibited from engaging in some of the activities they had practiced in the past. The report's findings on the Muslim Brotherhood in particular will certainly hamper Muslim Brotherhood leaders' prospects for applying for political asylum in the UK, now that some countries in the Middle East that the Brotherhood had used as a base for their activities have begun to expel them. Above all, the processes of channelling funds to and from the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organisations in the UK will be tightly regulated. In this regard, I have learned that the commission that has been conducting an extensive investigation into the activities of three UK-based Muslim Brotherhood charity societies has found evidence indicating that those societies were involved in funding terrorist organisations. The preceding information that British officials regard as an alarming discovery had been familiar to us in Egypt for a long time. Egypt repeatedly cautioned European countries of the danger. It also repeatedly warned the US, which continues to shelter some major leaders of terrorist activities, such as Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently serving a life sentence in an American prison, whose release was one of the first causes espoused by ex-president Mohamed Morsi. Meanwhile, Washington and European countries kept trying to compel the new government in Egypt to work to bring the Muslim Brotherhood back into the political arena. Towards this end, they repeatedly argued that there was no clear links between the Muslim Brothers and the terrorist attacks that Egypt has experienced since the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime on 30 June 2013.
